Today's Liberal News

adrienne maree brown: Octavia Butler’s Visions of the Future Have Transformed Generation of Readers

The visionary Black science-fiction writer Octavia Butler died 15 years ago on February 24, 2006, but her influence and readership has only continued to grow since then. In September, Butler’s novel “Parable of the Sower” became her first to reach the New York Times best-seller list. We speak with adrienne maree brown, a writer and Octavia Butler scholar, who says Butler had a remarkable talent for universalizing Black stories.

Remembering Octavia Butler: Black Sci-Fi Writer Shares Cautionary Tales in Unearthed 2005 Interview

As Democracy Now! marks 25 years on the air, we are revisiting some of the best and most impactful moments from the program’s history, including one of the last television interviews given by the visionary Black science-fiction writer Octavia Butler. She spoke to Democracy Now! in November 2005, just three months before she died on February 24, 2006, at age 58.

Wednesday Night Owls: GOP cozies up to Jim Crow with still more voter suppression bills

Night Owls is a themed open thread appearing at Daily Kos seven days a week.

Ari Berman at Mother Jones writes—Republicans Are Taking Their Voter Suppression Efforts to New Extremes From Georgia to Iowa. Republicans are concocting new ways to suppress Democratic votes:

After record turnout in 2020, Republican-controlled states appear to be in a race to the bottom to see who can pass the most egregious new barriers to voting.

Q&A: Two women could make history as the first Black woman DA and sheriff in Alameda County

Recent election cycles have seen a surge in the number of women, particularly women of color, running for elected office. Now, months after the highly anticipated 2020 election came to a close, two women have already their eyes set on two major elected positions in their county—and if they’re elected, they could make history.

JoAnn Walker and Pamela Price are running on a joint bid for Alameda County sheriff and district attorney, respectively.

Daily Kos Elections presents our comprehensive guide to the 117th Congress’ members and districts

Following the conclusion of the 2020 congressional elections, Daily Kos Elections is pleased to unveil the most comprehensive guide you’ll find anywhere to the members of the new 117th Congress. This spreadsheet includes a wealth of demographic and electoral data on senators and representatives, as well as the states and districts they represent, providing key insight on the makeup of Congress and statistics that play a critical role in understanding both chambers.

Judge indefinitely halts moratorium on most deportations. But Biden can still act in other ways

The federal judge who last month temporarily halted the Biden administration’s 100-day moratorium on most deportations following a lawsuit from Texas’ very-corrupt Republican attorney general has extended that pause “indefinitely,” the Associated Press reports. That initial hold from U.S. District Judge Drew Tipton, who was appointed by the previous administration, was set to expire Tuesday. It’s now extended indefinitely.

Texas’s Disaster Is Over. The Fallout Is Just Beginning.

Dozens of Texans are dead because of the state’s energy crisis last week. Some froze in their bed or their living room. Others suffocated in their idling car, poisoned by carbon monoxide. A few perished in house fires while trying to keep their family warm. And millions spent days without heat or running water. Gaming out the electoral ramifications of an event when it’s still causing pain may seem crass. But the politics of the energy crisis are inextricable from the event itself.

Where Are the Iconic COVID-19 Images?

A tennis ball covered in spikes. That’s all we’ve got. More than a year has passed since the first reports of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus, and its most memorable visual signifier is a stylized illustration of the virus itself. That spiky ball floats in the background of explanatory graphics and charts, or looms eerily behind the heads of television anchors delivering yet more somber news. When I think of COVID-19, that’s what I see.

The Many Cruelties of I Care A Lot

Psychiatric hospitals, nursing homes, and other long-term-care facilities have served as chilling backdrops to some of film’s most arresting psychological thrillers. But the foreboding lighthouse of Shutter Island and the macabre, labyrinthine hospital of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest pale in comparison with both movies’ animating horrors: the wretched treatment of the people trapped within.

Coronavirus Reinfection Will Soon Become Our Reality

On its face, reinfection appears to be a straightforward term. It is literally “infection, again”—a recovered person’s second dalliance with the same microbe. Long written into the scientific literature of infectious disease, it is a familiar word, innocuous enough: a microbial echo, an immunological encore act.But thanks to the pandemic, reinfection has become a semantic and scientific mess.